Director: Eli Craig
Screenplay: Eli Craig and Morgan Jurgenson
Starring: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger
Release Date: January 22nd, 2010
TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL is the most consistently hilarious and biting satire of the horror genre I have ever had the pleasure of watching, ranking in the upper-echelons of the horror-comedy subgenre with classics like EVIL DEAD II, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, and most recently THE CABIN IN THE WOODS. That it manages to do so while also telling a sweet tale of two genuine friends who support each other even while moronic college kids begin dying around them in droves is perhaps it’s greatest triumph.
The film begins with a group of rowdy college students driving into the Appalachian Mountains for spring break. They are immediately established as the typical idiotic over-sexed pot-smoking misogynist assholes that have populated every horror film in the last decade. Pointing and laughing at the locals as they drive past, the group is put off by the way Tucker and Dale (Tudyk and Labine) stare at them silently as they pass in their pickup truck and immediately come to the conclusion that the two must be insane cannibalistic chainsaw wielding psycho hillbillies. The truth of the matter is that Tucker and Dale are just two harmless good ol’ boys who are on vacation, venturing out to do some cleaning up at Tucker’s newly-acquired vacation home, a decrepit shack in the bowels of the forest. All they’re interested in is drinkin’ some beer, doin’ some fishin’, and yeah, maybe catching a glimpse of those cute college girls skinny dipping.
It’s while spying that they accidentally startle Allison (Bowden), who falls from a rock into the lake and is knocked unconscious. Dale jumps in to rescue her and when her friends witness them pulling her from the lake into their canoe they assume that the two have kidnapped their friend, running back to camp to let the rest know. That’s when Chad (Moss), the token jock and biggest douche of the bunch, takes charge and declares all out war on the well-meaning duo. When Allison comes to in Tucker’s cabin she quickly discovers how totally wrong her friends are about the gentle rednecks, striking up a friendship with an incredibly shy Dale. Unfortunately she is knocked unconscious again during an attack by her friends on Tucker and Dale, and so is unable to tell them what really happened. As the film progresses this comedy of misunderstanding spiral further out of control as each of the “educated” dumb-asses proceeds to accidentally off themselves in increasingly violent and comical ways as Tucker and Dale, horrified and confused beyond belief, attempt to make sense of why these stupid college kids keep running out of the woods and killing themselves.
Director Eli Craig has crafted an ingenious inversion of standard horror movie tropes by simply shifting the perspective from the soon-to-be-dead teenagers to the “backwoods hick”. Teenagers still die, horribly and inventively, but ultimately it’s the hillbillies who wind up victimized due to the kids’ stupidity and unfounded prejudice. Tudyk and Labine imbue with such loveable warmth and genuine decency that you wish the college kids would just leave them alone to enjoy their ice chest full of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Labine steals the movie as Dale, whose lack of confidence and budding romance with Allison forms the emotional crux of the movie. While that romance initially seems far-fetched, by the film’s ending it has grown so naturally that it seems entirely within reason. Tudyk provides ample support as Tucker and I found it refreshing that his constant preaching to Dale about how he needs to believe in himself does not come off as corny in the slightest, but rather as a sincere show of friendship.
The college kids, on the other hand, are completely unorganized nimrods who don’t support each other at all. Chad (Moss), the alpha male of the group and the guy who would be considered the “hero” in most backwoods horror flicks, immediately enters primal survival mode and by the end of the film is more psychotic than the “hillbillies” he alleges murdered his parents twenty years prior. Tucker and Dale are good guys, but Chad and the others’ intolerance of “their kind” leads to their own demise. This is the first movie I’ve seen where I was supposed to hate the teen leads, and I reveled in seeing them rended limb from limb due to their sheer ineptitude. All of the deaths in the film are the result of some misunderstanding, like when Dale accidentally saws through a bee hive while cutting down a tree and runs away madly brandishing his chainsaw, causing one of the kids to run away so frantically that he impales himself on a length of tree branch. One asshole unintentionally shoots himself in the face while trying to turn off the safety on a pistol, and another tries to attack Tucker only to trip and fall headfirst into a wood-chipper. I especially loved Tudyk’s horrified reaction when he turns around to find half of a college kid sticking out of the machine. With each death the stakes get raised further as Tucker and Dale are obviously going to be held responsible for the deaths, but Craig and co-writer Morgan Jurgenson manage to write themselves out of that hole in a totally believable and entirely satisfying manner.
I cannot stress enough how much fun I had with TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL. I haven’t laughed this hard or this consistently at a movie of any genre in a long time. With solidly endearing performances from it’s leads and absolutely successful delivery on a unique premise, I cannot recommend this film enough.
My Rating: 10/10
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